Ogbo Awoke Ogbo
In 1988-89, I taught Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Maiduguri. My Moslem students, inspired by Ahmed Deedat’s works, confronted me with such passages as God telling Saul to wipe out the Amalekites. They would also mention the command given Joshua to kill off all the Canaanites.
Later, when the Islamic terror attacks flooded the globe, some Moslems would cite such passages to justify their blood lust. How could a God of Love give such ‘mean’ commands to kill?
Other Bible critics and atheists have criticized the Old Testament for its bloodiness. And they’d be right if they knew what God knows about sin in the human heart.
There’s so much hostility against God and His children in our world today. So much rebellion against His ways. The heart of man has become more reptilian than human. So much shedding of human blood.
I don’t remember seeing a dead body until way into my late teens or even early twenties! The adults wouldn’t let you peep at a dead body. That’s how innocent our world once was. When my precious grandmother died in 1974, I wasn’t allowed near her body… and I was already nine years old.
Such was the sanctity of life and the gravity of death. In those days, when someone died, people genuinely grieved and reflected and sobered up for months.
These days, while the body of the deceased is yet to be interred, people are already quarreling about the rice, meat and beer. You’d see ‘mourners’ brawling over plastic coolers of rice, pounded yam and crates of beer. No sobriety!
I often wonder what the dead person would say as he watches all the glutonous feasting going on around his embalmed corpse. ‘So, they are actually happy I’m dead!’
I have noticed that the death of sobriety signals the death of the soul. If you can’t reflect, you’re doomed.
Any society that cannot reflect on death will not honor the sanctity of life.
Seventeen years after the infamous 9/11, America still remembers her citizens killed in that terror attack. Every 9/11 for 17 years, the President of the United States would stand with the families of the deceased as each victim’s name is read out… one by one. What a society!
In the same way, 73 years after Hitler murdered their six million, Israel still remembers Auschwitz … “Never Again!”
By contrast, in “Nigeria,” 3.5 million Biafrans, mostly children of my generation, were killed or starved to death by Nigeria! Thousands of unarmed men were murdered in cold blood at Asaba by Murtala Muhammad. Forty-eight years after, not one day has been set apart to reflect on these individuals whose destinies were violently cut short.
I was lucky to escape death but 2 million children my age did not. Imagine 1,000,000 other Ogbos alive in Nigeria today – some scientists, some teachers, some engineers, some business leaders, some politicians. Would we have been this cursed as a country?
Most shocking, the perpetrators of the genocide are still alive and walking the streets free – ready to kill even more!
In Nigeria, Fulani herdsmen massacre thousands of helpless Middle Belters overnight. The Nigerian President wouldn’t visit even after three years in office… doesn’t even mention it. The Mister of Defense defends his kinsmen killers. The Police Chief disarms the local vigilante that provides a semblance of hope for the people. He does not disarm his kinsmen killers but the soon-to-be killed villagers.
And people are wasting their spittle praying for the prosperity of “One Nigeria.” On what basis? Do you understand blood? Do you understand the Scripture: “And the Lord was not willing to forgive?”
Have you wondered that while other nations are creating modern city centers, Nigeria continues to create massive IDP camps?
Do you understand spiritual laws with regard to the voice of human blood? Do you understand what it means when the blood of millions of murdered people chant against one land? Then you will understand why nothing, absolutely nothing has worked (and will never work) in this country. Until…
In a land soaked with blood, life is cheap. As my Uber driver said two days ago, “They kill like they’re squishing a cockroach.”
Nevertheless, before you take it too far to mean “them” and not “me,” I too experience a siege in my soul. When sin knocks at my door and I let it in. Not just for a visit, but for rent. When I play landlord to sin; when I cling to the sin that “so easily besets.”
There is only one answer to sin. Some religions use alms and good deeds to try to gain acceptance with God. They want to use good deeds to erase sin in the heart and gain favor in Paradise.
If you’re trying to earn heaven by your good deeds, you have no idea what sin is! If you did, you would understand why it only takes Blood to erase your sin. You will understand why the Old Testament, especially Leviticus, is so “bloody.”
Sin is to the spiritual world what the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb is to the physical world.
According to Wikipedia, the Russian RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, also called the Tsar Bomba, was the biggest and most powerful thermo nuclear bomb ever made. If that should land in your country’s capital, probably 25 million people would vaporize instantly.
Now, imagine that each time you told a lie over your cell phone, you’ve hurled an RDS-220 at God. Remember what Joseph told Potiphar? “How can I commit such a great sin against God?” Every sin we commit is against God.
Let’s not complicate matters further. Let’s bring this to a simple landing. The Blood of Jesus Christ, shed on Calvary (by now if you still struggle with the Death and Resurrection of Christ, sorry, I can’t help you) cleanses us from all sin.
Please don’t die in your sin – that’s the foolishest thing to do! Christ already paid the price for your and my sin. Reach out to Him and ask for mercy and forgivenesses. And ask for the infilling of the Holy Spirit.
I love you. Be healthy, wealthy and wise!